And the winner is...

i tried to lie to myself that today's debate wouldnt rattle me. on the contrary, i kept waking every now and then to check my alarm clock - a sure sign that i was nervous.

it was a sunny morning. i kept thinking of the debate as the pail of water that cooled my excitement of going to bangkok. as promised, i met my teammates at puteri titiwangsa, from where we the english and the bm debaters trudged our way amidst the jam to PPD Bangsar-Pudu, situated next to Victoria Institution.

it was stated in the programme that the debate would start at 7.30am. as if!

it was a blessing that my team comprised of zany teachers, because at this time i needed their zaniness to keep me sane, after seeing the serious faced debaters - the sentul team even wore lawyer styled attire - in white tops and black skirts. i'm sure my fren elison the lawyer would be very much amused if she knew this.

and so, amidst the seriousness, farid's peals of laughter were refreshing, and that helped me to relax a bit and while the other teams were talking about strategies (including our BM counterpart) we were busy posing for pictures.

when the 1st round of debates were going on, we were ushered into a meeting room and - just moments after farid said "i hope we get the opposition", the lots were drawn, and we were the Opposition! that was enough to guarrantee our loss, because we were not really prepared for it, and we were hoping to lose anyway.

in the quarantine room, i was nervous, but i kept thinking, these ladies were with me and we wanted to get this over and done with.

at 11 ish, we started our debate, and i must say that at first we kept quiet and let the PM of the Govt had her day as we didnt want to POI even though i could detect a lot of flaws in her arguments and was itching to POI so badly. you have no idea how much i suffered, trying to bottle up my POIs and sitting there silently, giving the picture to the adjudicators that we're a bunch of idiots.

they tried to POI us lots of time. we kept denying the POIs - not because we couldnt answer them, but because we desperately wanted to lose. strange, huh? when the DPM started delivering her speech, i thought, what the heck, let's POI this lady. which i did. which she didnt reply. which i commented later in my rebuttals.

later, i told their third speaker that i had a lot to POI, but i was there to lose.

the results were obvious.

we could win if we wanted to. not to say that we're incompetent speakers. we could have smashed the govt team with our wit if we wanted to, but we purposely lost. if we had won, this means missing school, and wasting a lot of precious time. besides, if winning the debate means a pay raise, i won't mind. but my pay will still be the same.